How Sexism Expresses Itself in Systems. A Story.

This is a story about a woman we shall call Veronica Kim. Veronica is fictional. She is a composite of women whose stories I have heard and experienced for much of my professional career.

Veronica was valedictorian of her high school in Indiana, where she was one of the few non-white people in her town. She went to Columbia University, where she studied journalism. Her focus was audio and multimedia.

In the spring of her senior year, the graduates-to-be have a meet and greet with a few senior editors from news shops around the east coast. One of the editors of a major newspaper in New York, an avuncular man in his 60s, gives Veronica his card and tells her to set up a meeting with his secretary. He seems genuinely impressed with her reporting on homelessness surrounding the Columbia campus - her interactive visuals were stunning, her editing choices solid, and her narration drew you in, but was still conversational. They are starting a podcast series, and she would be a perfect fit.

Veronica calls the secretary the next day, and, after a few days of back and forth emails, has an appointment two weeks hence.

When she gets there, though, she isn’t ushered into the office of the avuncular man she had met at Columbia. She is taken to the office of another man, who seems irritated she is there. 

The man gives her a production job on the paper’s new daily podcast, but takes it as a given that she doesn’t really know how to use Pro-Tools, even though she had graduated from Columbia and did her final thesis in Pro-Tools.

She does some good work and after a few years, the avuncular man praises her publicly.

She pitches a limited podcast series, and the committee of editors is impressed, not just by the pitch about sexual assault in the military, but by her work up to that point. The committee included the avuncular man, and her boss, who is in agreement with them.

She is given the green light to host and executive produce the series.

Her boss tells her she only got the assignment because they had a quota. And she fits two categories.

In meetings, he directs all of his questions to her lead producer, who is Veronica’s direct report and mentee, just a year out of college. He ignores Veronica. The young man feels uncomfortable. But he answers the boss’ questions.

She has hired a great team, and they are working on all cylinders to create this series. Her team is happy, they are ahead of schedule, and are putting together a series they are excited about.

About five months in, she is told by her boss that she will be getting a co-host. Since the series is about the military, they need a man’s voice. She tries in vain to argue that the series is about sexual assault, and the man’s voice isn’t needed.

The show’s male co-host completely ignores not only Veronica’s vision, and authority, but the careful work she and her team have done. One of the primary subjects ends up pulling out, because she is wary of the co-host, who seemed not to believe her story, which the rest of the team had already vetted.

Veronica gets through it. Gritting her teeth.

The series is a success, and gives great credibility to Veronica and her co-host.

At a party celebrating, her co-host corners her as she is coming out of the bathroom and kisses her. She tells him to get lost. Forcefully. She texts some friends. She’s rattled.

Later that evening, after the former co-host had a few, he tells a bunch of colleagues - when he thinks Veronica is out of earshot - that he was brought on to “save” the show.

The next day back at work, her co-host is whispering to people, and Veronica thinks people are treating her differently. She is about to start executive producing and hosting a new podcast, when her boss calls her in to tell her she isn’t getting it after all. They gave it to her lead producer. The one her boss kept directing his questions to. It is to be hosted by her former co-host.

She thinks about going to HR and complaining. But what would she say? 

“He kissed me?” Nobody saw him do it. It would be his word against hers. 

“He said I couldn’t use Pro-Tools because I was a woman?” He was joking.

“He told me how to lead my team?” Don’t be so sensitive.

Veronica’s husband has just gotten his PhD and has been adjunct teaching at Barnard and doing the primary care for their daughter, who is now two. He just got an offer for a job upstate. They were not going to take it, but work has gotten so horrible that she decides she’s going to quit and come with him.

After she gets there, there’s a job at a local NPR station for a web producer. Great, Veronica, thinks. Less pressure.

The job is great. The news and features editor seems to have a vision, and really thinks Veronica is his missing piece. But he is getting pushback from the boss about the efficacy of web-based and social media. The boss is older, and can’t imagine anyone would listen to a podcast. A few months in, the news and features editor quits out of the blue.

Veronica is the most experienced person in the room. She produced a nationally renowned daily podcast for a major New York newspaper. She executive produced and co-hosted a highly regarded series about women in the military for that same national outlet. She has run teams and run projects. She is already helping people in the newsroom be better journalists, as they Slack her for advice.

But she doesn’t have the highest title among the team. She is just a web editor. The content director - who oversees the news and features editor - is looking at hierarchy, not skills. Because that is how this white, Iowa-bred, 60-year-old male content director was taught leadership. It’s all about titles.

The person with the highest title under the now departed news and features editor is the senior producer. He has never run a team. He has never managed a project. He was a local well-known print columnist before he was brought into this, his first radio job.

And yet he’s chosen.

The job is never floated internally or externally. No one talks to Veronica about whether or not she would be interested. The content director just chooses based on hierarchy.

Days after he is installed, the news and features editor has new business cards printed. He is pleased with his new title. He is not pleased with his new duties, which, as a manager, is about focusing on the people who work for him. He has no interest in building the team, or making decisions, or even creating schedules. He wants the team to focus on him.

No one feels seen or heard. Good ideas for features and projects are dismissed, often with a joke and a put-down. Demoralization sets in. 

People are still coming to Veronica for advice. Secretly. On the side. She is still the most experienced manager and producer in the room, title or no. But experience doesn’t matter. Skills don’t matter. All that matters is the system. And the system is designed to prop up mediocrity.

Soon, teammates stop coming to Veronica for help. Everything they try to get done is stopped by the new editor, who is pissed people have ideas that he didn’t think of. The team starts phoning it in. Resumes are sent out regularly, and within a year, much of the team is gone. 

Veronica is one of them. She and her husband decided to have another child, so she left, with the formal reason that she wanted to spend more time with her family. She knows she would really like to spend time doing great work in an environment where people appreciate and support each other. She knows she can’t give that as an excuse for leaving. “It’s demoralizing to work here” is too unspecific for an exit interview. Better to give them an excuse they expect.

We’ve talked a lot the last year or so about what has been dubbed “the great resignation.” People, post-pandemic, have been leaving their jobs. The truth is, many left their jobs a long time ago, even if they were showing up daily.

We have to stop talking about people resigning as if it is an issue of coddling people with overly generous unemployment subsidies. Those subsidies ran out long ago, and yet the great resignation - or the great employment reset - is still happening. 

We have to stop thinking that treating people with respect is “coddling.” People want to work. We want to make a difference. We want to leave something important to the world.

Veronica started a non-profit to supply books to elementary schools. She now has three children. Sometimes she thinks they are her contribution to the world. Sometimes she looks at her children and wonders how they will remain intact after entering the systems that drove her away from journalism. Sometimes she looks at the state of journalism and wonders how the systems that failed her are failing the rest of the country. Her former co-host was just fired for sexually harassing a number of women he worked with. Nobody reached out to her to say they were sorry or make reparations, or even ask about her experience. Nobody looked inward to see how the system made his behavior possible. They just got rid of him and moved on.

Veronica hears about this as if in a fever dream. Her life now is so different. And yet she aches. She aches to tell stories. She aches to foster communication and understanding. All of the dreams she had when she went to Columbia are still there. But they are dreams. They are only dreams. She’s 35. And filled with broken dreams.